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MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

arstechnica.com

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Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#221

Post by eieio »

fratis wrote: post #201
pkamb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, you can use Leopard's Exposé in Snow Leopard: http://superuser.com/questions/118424/old-leopard-expose-on-... I really miss "all windows" Exposé; Mission Control is not a worthy replacement. Any word on Exposé changes in 10.8?

For me, it's really Spaces whose usefulness was diminished in 10.7. They used to be configurable in multiple dimensions (i.e., X & Y): now they're linear only. Lame city.

I use change space(https://github.com/sdsykes/Change-Space) to get around this, but the fact that I can't have native 2-d spaces really bothers me. Change Space is good, but it does have a few bugs that wouldn't exist if Apple hadn't insisted on breaking spaces for no reason that I'm aware of.

I love my Macbook but can't stand the direction of the operating system. It feels like I use more and more hacks like the above just to have a usable machine.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#222

Post by bitcrusher »

xbryanx wrote: post #55

Will you still be able to order a MacBook with the matte display? Or does the retina display preclude this? I hate the glossy screen and was happy to pay extra for matte on my current MacBook.

You can, but not with the Retina display. Shame, I am quite in love with my current matte screen.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#223

Post by agravier »

dangrossman wrote: post #103
pclark wrote: post #23

all I want is 3g on laptops

What would be the point when there's not a single US cell network that offers unlimited 3G data for computers? Or is there someone in California? There's not here. Might as well just tether from your phone since you can only do it a few times a month without hitting your data cap.

Well, there are cheap unlimited 3G data plans without restriction on the device here in Singapore, and I guess in other countries too. But I guess Apple's biggest market remains the US, right?

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#224

Post by marknutter »

SeoxyS wrote: post #2

Looks like I'll have to be heading to the Apple store after the keynote is over... Edit: I'm curious, why the downvotes?

Probably because it didn't add much to the discussion, which is actually what down-voting is technically supposed to be used for. Makes sense, I wouldn't want this comment to be up towards the top - it's just you saying you want to buy a MBP.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#225

Post by barrkel »

lazerwalker wrote: post #83
barrkel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Windows on my MBA for when I'm travelling. Apple make fantastic hardware; but their saccharine UIs make me retch. One constant, though: over the past 10 years, I've moved my life further and further into the Cygwin command line, so that I'm insulated from the frippery going on at the edges; with my setup, I'm approximately as at home on Linux, Solaris, Mac and Windows. I'm not optimistic based on what I've seen…

Out of curiosity, if you're comfortable with Linux and do a lot of work in a Cygwin environment, what are your reasons for running Windows as your MBA's main OS rather than a Linux flavor?

Ask that question the other way around: if you could get all the command-line goodness you want from Linux but also have all the device support (particularly, solid graphics card drivers), apps, games etc. of Windows, isn't that better?

Linux GUIs (Android only partially excepted), in my experience, are amateur in the worst way: dilettantish, faddish, inconsistent, incomplete, and replaced with something new and differently broken long before any stability emerges. I also really dislike the UI scaling: the font selection, border sizes, etc., KDE / Gnome defaults are all too widely spaced for my taste, and customizing it so that it would be acceptable seems to be a full-time job. As it is with Windows, I had to install Classic Shell to get a usable explorer tree view and start menu I could live with.

There isn't a single graphical app available exclusively for Linux that I'm jealous of. And for command-line / server stuff that's Linux-only, I'm perfectly happy with ssh running in mintty on Windows.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#226

Post by fjorder »

fjorder wrote: post #213
natural219 wrote: post #8

I have been a Windows user my whole life. As a hacker who has recently moved to San Francisco, I've continuously battled Apple fanboys and Linux fanatics alike on why I love Windows and absolutely do not understand why people want to switch platforms. Then I watched this keynote. I'm buying a Macbook Pro.

I've spent a reasonable amount of time using Windows, Linux, and OSX. All of them suck. All of them are also awesome, at different things. If you want an living room PC for entertainment, Windows is king. Neither Linux or OSX support Bluray properly and Windows still has a huge edge in gaming. Windows also supports the most hardware. That's become unimportant to most people, but if you work in a research lab with var…

One further note on hardware quality:

Perceived hardware quality is something Apple is fantastic at. Their laptops look and feel great. They feel like they'll last decades. This is misleading since they're actually built to be disposable. e.g. If you spill coffee on your Macbook Air, it's dead. You can't fix it because you can't remove the battery in a timely fashion and don't have the tools to open it. Apple won't fix it because their warranty doesn't cover spills. They won't even open it up and help you clean it up. They'll just tell you it's now off warranty and to kindly buy another or PFO. This is the big apple lie. Their stuff feels like heirlooms, but it's built to be binned at the first sign of trouble or obsolescence (or when the non-user-replaceable battery inevitably fails).

For some strange reason Apple has managed to put retina displays in their laptops before LG or Samsung (who probably manufacture those panels) manage to put them in their own laptops. While other laptop manufacturers are pretty timid about doing new things these days, they are getting faster at following in Apple's footsteps. We'll likely see Samsung or LG putting out their own laptops with retina displays within a few months. At least some of them will have proper screws that you actually own a screwdriver for.

Samsung really has the potential to be an industry leader. They make everything. SSD's, memory, displays, you name it. Some of their efforts (e.g. the Series 9) have actually been innovative in certain small and specific ways. It's frustrating to watch them sit back and let Apple do things "first" with their own parts though. Someone at Samsung is really dropping the ball and I hope they're shown the door soon.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#227

Post by levesque »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #73
LaSombra wrote: post #10

I don't want a "Retina display", I want a true 1920x1080 on my 15" MBP. Apple is trying to impose that density is the same thing as resolution, which is not. A "Retina display" of 2880x1800 is just a "better" 1440x900. Give me the option to choose between double pixels and real pixels and I'll buy thee.

What would happen if you ran Windows or Linux on the MBP? What resolution would you get?

Most stuff in Linux looks crappy if you play too much with the DPI setting.

Hopefully the Linux devs will start taking this into consideration.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#228

Post by rdl »

jonknee wrote: post #217
rdl wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear god why? I am actually quite unimpressed by the entire WWDC lineup, but they made so many stupid mistakes like this. There is almost no advantage to using a slightly slimmer MagSafe, and moderate cost; there would be greater advantage to a smaller iPod Dock connector, but much higher cost, so I guess they'll do that too.

"Almost no advantage" = thinner laptops. Apple will go for thinner every time (see ethernet for an example).

It's not thinner than the MBA 2011. The MBA 2011 has regular MagSafe. Maybe they needed to go thinner for engineering reasons to put other stuff inside, but that seems lame.

Re: MacBook Pro gets Retina Display; MacBook Air updated with Ivy Bridge

#229

Post by cpr »

LaSombra wrote: post #10

I don't want a "Retina display", I want a true 1920x1080 on my 15" MBP. Apple is trying to impose that density is the same thing as resolution, which is not. A "Retina display" of 2880x1800 is just a "better" 1440x900. Give me the option to choose between double pixels and real pixels and I'll buy thee.

You'll eventually get better than 1920x1080 on your Retina MBP, because apps will adapt to the HiDPI APIs, and then you can scale all the critical parts (text views, graphics views, etc.) to be as tiny as you like and still get high-quality, and the same settings will work on the old non-Retina display but just look worse.

I.e., the approach they've taken is fully scaleable from current resolutions to high resolutions, but it'll take some cooperation from third-party software.

In the end, you'll be better off.

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